Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The web economy has not only transformed the way business is done around the world, it has also created a growing number of challenges and opportunities for CPAs and financial service providers.

Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do they have to be fully involved in the communities and industries they serve, they must also develop and maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better promote your services online.

As well as investing money advertising offline on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv, etc., businesses in the accounting industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be assigned to developing and managing a website that can bring new prospects, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and help to give their business wider marketing reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website may change in time and many aspects may need to be updated often. This requires a sound web and content management strategy.

One other challenge that accounting firms face, as do most other businesses for that matter, is that you have only about 30 seconds or less to help users find the information they are searching for or they will go away.

“Websites have evolved into central information hubs where service information is still present but enhanced with web portals, hyperlinks to state and federal sites, and a variety of free tools.”

Michael Alter, http://www.accountingweb.com/technology/accounting-software/tips-for-improving-your-website

Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Digital Economy

As well as facing many challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting sector that can adapt to meet digital economy demands and think strategically in terms of marketing their business services better online.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn about ways to attract more visitors and create significant improvements in your accounting and financial business presence online.

As well as providing tips and information on ways to improve your accounting business online, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your accounting website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, see the articles below:

• Why A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
• WordPress In Business – The Beginner’s Guide To Growing A Successful Small Business Using WordPress

Tips To Improve Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website

We’ll start first by covering the basics. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your accounting website and get better results. We will look at what pages an accounting website needs, what content works best for accounting and financial services websites, layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, visit this page: How To Plan A Website: A Comprehensive Guide For Business Owners

Essential Website Pages

Professional business websites require a number of basic web pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Your Products And Services

It’s essential to have a page that describes your services and any products that you offer.

Your page should include services such as:

• Business accounting – planning, formation, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, forecasting, financing, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparation, planning, reviewing, auditing, advice, problem resolution
• Investment strategies
• Corporate finance
• Wealth creation
• Superannuation/retirement plan (401k) advice
• Audit risk assessment and assurance
• Quickbooks – setup, training, tune up, and support
• Specialist services – mergers, acquisitions, information technology, secretarial, rentals, trusts, fiduciary accounting, succession planning, selling businesses, asset transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and why they should book an appointment with you.

About Us

This page needs to describe your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.

Remember to mention any industry awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote the company and position it above other competitors.

(List all of your awards accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc. in the About page. Screenshot image sourced from: deloitte.com)

Your Staff

Are you searching for inexpensive ideas to sell more products or services online or get prospects to stay longer on your site? Then something you can do, is help visitors get to know your organization better.

You want prospective clients to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors are probably not well-versed in accounting terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should even include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow selected staff members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to highlight each staff member’s expertise and qualifications, how their skills contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a page that introduces your staff members to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: deepsky.com)

To learn more about how to easily add an easy-to-maintain directory of employees to your web site using a free plugin, see this tutorial: How To Easily Add A Staff Directory

Work For Us

List any career opportunities within the organization. This page would include training provided, benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. You can also include stories of recruits who have established a solid career path thanks to your organization and information such as the job outlook and new career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Include also a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your updates list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

Testimonials from previous clients and case studies are a great way to show potential clients businesses minimize tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients, you will also help to establish social proof online.

(Add a page with case studies and reviews from clients. Screenshot source: pcg-services.com)

If you want to learn more about using testimonials, case studies and reviews, see this article: How To Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects With Engaging Client Testimonials

Contact Page

A clean contact page is crucial.

It should provide:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Your address
• Phone
• Fax number
• Email address
• Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media networks
• Chat (optional feature)

If your business operates from multiple locations you will want to make that clear when showing your address and contact info.

Consider also including a few links for commonly-asked questions, main pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like news and events, product updates, educational articles and tutorials, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your business.

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing site is very hard to keep updated or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can serve both as your website and your blog.

Very few businesses know that WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation system that can begin to attract new visitors to your website, simply by publishing regular content to your site.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

For more details: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Getting More Website Traffic For Your Business Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Pages

As a professional accountant, ensuring that you have a website that complies will all legal requirements online is vitally important, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not contravening any local, regional or federal laws or regulations wherever your do business in.

Depending on the services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your accounting website will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more about this: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Improving Your Content

In today’s highly competitive online economy, being generous with content has become one of the key differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

Providing great content with information and tips will get your visitors to share your web pages and come back for more information. Publishing content is a great way to educate site visitors and prospects about your business.

For example, topics for an accounting or financial services business can cover the following:

• How balance sheets work
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Business cashflow planning tips
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Risk prevention
• Structuring your self-managed retirement fund
• Do’s and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your readers gain a better understanding of accounting services, such as software accounting, small business accounting, business budgeting, reducing debt, understanding financial conventions, etc.

Remember to include keywords in your content that readers would search for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content for your visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Tips For Improving User Experience

Improving your user experience (typically referred to as UX) will help keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and UX.

RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide many benefits for your business.

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites may want to syndicate your content.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other websites using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Allows for subscribing
• It provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. view your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to providing information on your site from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

You can find many useful RSS feeds by visiting sites of relevant government departments or key industry bodies.

Below we have listed some exaples of feeds you could consider adding to your website:

• Taxation Policy Center: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/press/rss.cfm
• Australian Taxation Office: https://www.ato.gov.au/RSS-news-feeds.aspx
• Canada Revenue Agency: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/rssfeeds/
• UK HM Revenue and Customs: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rss/rss.htm
• South Africa Revenue Service: http://www.sars.gov.za/Pages/RSS-Feeds.aspx

(Using RSS feeds can help to improve your accounting site’s user experience.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and forms are a great way to increase user engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. Checklists and forms can provide useful step-by-step instructions and resources to complete necessary tasks. Checklists and forms are great planning tools.

You can provide a range of checklists and forms covering topics such as:

• How To Set Up A Business
• Negative Gearing Checklist
• Fundraising Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Individual Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Add Other Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are some of the most popular tools for accounting websites. Other tools can include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In part two, we take a look at a several online tools you can use in your accounting website using WordPress plugins that can help improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

***

This is the end of part one of this article on ways to build your accounting business presence online.

Click on this link to keep reading:

• How To Grow An Accounting Business Online – Part 2

Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Get Published!

***

***

***